Marketisation of Education

10 Key excerpts on "Marketisation of Education"

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  Modern Work and the Marketisation of Higher Education

  • Gerbrand Tholen(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Policy Press

    (Publisher)

  2

  Dimensions of marketisation

  Marketisation has been widely acknowledged as a driving force in modern higher education (HE) systems (Lynch, 2006 ; Molesworth et al, 2011 ; Brown, 2013 ; McGettigan, 2013 ). This chapter explains how the role of competition and markets has transformed HE. It outlines three areas in which marketisation has manifested itself with the current HE landscape in England. These are: the rise of user-pay finance; increasing managerialism; and increasing commodification. Many other influences have been identified as salient impacts of marketisation, including growing within-institution differentiation, changing institutional identity, growing institutional instability, changing societal impact and commercialisation. The consequences covered here are the ones that can be most directly associated with the marketisation policy drive.

  User-pay

  The first key impact and at the same time a cause of marketisation of HE lies in how HE has been financed. Decisions around who should pay for it, in practice, are entwined by debates about whether the market should coordinate education provision. Once the cost of HE has been shifted to its users, rather than from public funds, it positions the institution and student differently in relation to each other. The market–consumer relationship provides a blueprint of how each of them should behave. As explained in the previous chapter , user-pay schemes are thought to lead to a system of financially motivated actors who are incentivised to pay more critical attention to their consumption and supply of HE. As Jongbloed (2003 , p 114) explains: ‘Marketisation policies try to push for self-steering and accountable entities that decide on the basis of reliable information. Through marketisation policies, students and colleges are encouraged to make their own cost-benefit analyses.’

  In the English context, the perhaps most apparent change in HE provision is the rise in (undergraduate) tuition fees. Although state support for either student or institution has not always been a significant feature of the HE system, from the early 20th century this gradually changed as the state started funding its institutions. By the middle of the century, the state provided 90 per cent of university income (Newton et al, 2017 , p 5). By 1962, there was free tuition for full-time domestic students, combined with maintenance grants and loans for students. The year 1998 saw the introduction of tuition fees paid by undergraduate students in England. The fees of up to £1,000 per year were to be paid up-front, but means-tested such that low-income students would still face no tuition fees. In 2006, tuition fees rose to £3,000 per year, and were no longer charged up-front but via an expansion of the income-contingent loan. Higher fees pleased Conservatives concerned at the rising contribution by the taxpayer. Labour also saw the increase in fees as a means to increase participation, aiding social mobility. Students from middle- and upper-class families were the beneficiaries of university, enjoying private returns from their publicly funded degrees. Charging tuition fees would bring in funds from those groups while offering opportunities to support low-income students (Murphy et al, 2019 ). In September 2012, HE institutions in England were permitted to triple their annual tuition fee from £3,000 to £9,000. The loans were still income-contingent, with a threshold for repayment of £21,000 per year with positive real interest rates applied. Teaching grants were cut radically, with lecture-based subjects receiving no government subsidies for teaching students. The intended competition on price between institutions never materialised as practically all institutions have opted to charge the maximum for the full-time undergraduate courses. The political aim of establishing an undergraduate market through the promotion of differentiation in tuition fees has not been lost, however (DBIS, 2015 , 2016 ). Fee variation remains to be seen by many as the necessary mechanism for student consumers to be able to drive improvements in quality, affordability and differentiation effectively. Whether the fee increase has decreased the pressure on the public finances remains to be seen. Tuition fees are not paid up-front. Instead, students cover the cost of their degree through loans and only repay when they earn above an earnings threshold (currently £27,295 a year). How much the increase has lowered the burden on the taxpayer remains somewhat unclear. Furthermore, the sell-off of the loan book allows private capital to flow into HE finance and so this reliance on financial markets could increase the stability of the finance model (Hale, 2018

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  Management and Leadership of Educational Marketing

  Research, Practice and Applications

  • Izhar Oplatka, Jane Hemsley-Brown, Izhar Oplatka, Jane Hemsley-Brown, Anthony H. Normore(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  While seeking to chart the changing map, there are a number of overall concluding observations, which reflect key themes or issues in the emergence of the field, and three of these will be considered here. Firstly, it is clear that market-based concepts and marketisation have created significant challenges to the hegemonies that previously existed within both education and academic research. Their introduction brought philosophical and operational challenges that provided a conceptual battleground in which the existing perspectives were challenged by new ideas and where those new ideas brought both ideological and sociological conflicts within existing ‘communities’. Educational communities, for example, resisted notions of the student or parent as ‘customer’, while research communities resisted the idea that markets and marketisation were legitimate areas for scholarly work in education. Markets and marketisation have therefore been ‘both the site and the stake’ of intellectual conflict ( Ball, 1993 ) as centralised producer-led notions of education began to be challenged by individualised, negotiated models of what education might be. While there are many both within the professional realms of education and within the wider community who regard marketisation as an inappropriate philosophy and concept for education, there are now few who do not accept that the new relationships and paradigms demanded by marketisation are part of their professional obligations as teachers, academics, managers or leaders. The battle to protect education from the challenges of the market has largely been lost, and the leaders of our schools, colleges and universities are obliged to operate in, and be accountable to, a marketised environment. Secondly, it is possible to observe a cycle of transition and change in the evolution of education markets.

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  Contemporary Debates in Education Studies

  • Jennifer Marshall(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Equally important, however, is the risk that, unless it is carefully controlled, competition leads to rationalization and an actual reduction in diversity and consumer choice. The publication of test results has produced a ‘quasi-market’ of winners and losers within the school system. The concepts of economics as a motivator to marketization of education are highly criticized by Lauder (2006), who argued that economic factors have replaced the learning aspects of education to more material-oriented learning processes, whereby schools concentrate on how they can achieve customer satisfaction as opposed to impartation of knowledge and skills. As long ago as the 1990s, Lauder was arguing that marketization of education arose due to the emergence of the class system. Parents from rich backgrounds saw the need for taking their children to private schools, because they offered higher quality education over state schools (Lauder et al., 1999). This aspect caused a rift between the rich and the poor in the educative process in terms of acquisition of knowledge. Bates et al. (2011) and Kishan (2008) observe that parents with low incomes struggle to send their children to private schools, and this accelerates the process of social segregation. The European Research Institute of Education conducted research on the marketization of education in Europe. It found that the state had lost its ability to regulate the education system in Europe as a result (Kishan, 2008). Another aspect of the marketization of education is the changing needs of the society that the education system needed to address. This issue is vague in its description, because education is age-old, and issues affecting the society are the same. Lauder (2006) agrees with this notion and notes that the education system concerns itself with the impartation of skills necessary for an individual to survive in the world

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  The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer

  • Mike Molesworth, Richard Scullion, Elizabeth Nixon, Mike Molesworth, Richard Scullion, Elizabeth Nixon(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In the other camp, there are those who consider that the shift towards the marketised university is having a deleterious impact on the university (for example, Reid 1996). There are nuances in this position, too. There are those who are prompted by a concern with the student experience and the claimed effect on the pedagogical relationship wrought by the student market, as students become ‘customers’. There are also those who are concerned about the university as a social institution and who believe that marketisation is corrupting the university as an embodiment of public goods.

  Noticeable in this polarisation of views – between the pro-marketers and the anti-marketers – are two similarities. Both would claim to ground their positions on empirical evidence but also both are imbued with a value position focused on the market as such. That is to say, the empirical evidence that each side would point to serves as a rationalisation of a prior position taken up either in favour of or against the market. The issue of the market in higher education, therefore, is an ideological site (cf. Barnett 2003). The positive and the hostile positions are taken up first and the evidence is found to support the position taken. It appears as if there is a debate, since evidence is brought to bear by the opposing parties but for the most part it amounts to a trading of fixed value-laden positions.

  Is there, then, a way through that will allow a less value-driven view to be developed? Is the market – which for many is indefensible – defensible? Is there something intrinsically or logically problematic with the marketisation of higher education? Alternatively, are there features of markets that might turn out to be beneficial for the development of higher education and the university? Might there just be available a position that offers a reconciliation of the polarised positions?

  Context: market plurality and market fuzziness

  Worldwide, universities experience the presence of the market to some extent. ‘Partial marketisation is a feature of many if not most national systems’ (Marginson 2007: 42; also see Brown in this book). In most higher education systems, universities have some freedom to generate income for themselves and are not totally dependent on state finance. To a greater or lesser extent, universities tend to be operating in the public sector and

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  Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education

  • Roger Brown, Helen Carasso(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 8 The impact of marketisation Quality In this chapter we review what the available evidence suggests about the impact of market-based reforms on quality, distinguishing between student education and research. We also discuss more briefly the effect of marketisation on the academy's ability to control the ‘academic agenda’, what is to be taught and researched and how. This in turn has implications both for quality and for universities’ broader relationship with society. Educational quality Our proposals are designed to create genuine competition for students between HEIs, of a kind which cannot take place under the current system. There will be more investment available for the HEIs that are able to convince students that it is worthwhile. This is in our view a surer way to drive up quality than any attempt at central planning. To safeguard this approach, we recommend that the [proposed] Higher Education Council enforces baseline standards of quality; and that students receive high quality information to help them choose the HEI and courses which best matches [sic] their aspirations. (Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance, 2010, p. 8) As we have seen, it has been the view of successive governments that market competition improves quality as institutions ‘raise their game’ to attract students. Against that, a number of writers (e.g., Smith et al., 1993; Yorke and Alderman, 1999; Naylor, 2007; Alderman, 2008, 2009, 2010; Gibbs, 2012) have claimed that academic standards may be falling and that increased competition, reinforced by institutional league tables, is one of the main reasons. A 2004 survey of 400 academics by Times Higher Education (Baty, 2004a) found that five out of six agreed that ‘the squeeze on the resources of higher education institutions is having a general adverse effect on academic standards’

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  School Choice and Student Well-Being

  Opportunity and Capability in Education

  • A. Kelly(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  at national, regional and local level in the United Kingdom the impact of open enrolment and competition is to reduce (rather than increase) segregation and stratification of students by social class, although of course not everyone agrees (Gewirtz et al., 1995; Bradley & Taylor, 2000; Gibson & Asthana, 2000). There is growing acceptance, though there is no conclusive proof yet that there is an increasing gap between the performance of students in the highest and lowest ranking schools (OFSTED, 1999; West & Pennell, 2000; Davies et al., 2002) and that the reduced role of local authorities has isolated schools from each other and has reduced cooperation and access to external expertise: [Co-operation] is more likely when a public service ethos dominates the local schooling market. In this case, heads and their governing bodies welcome co-operation and the perceived needs of all the chil- dren in the local community drive school behaviour. Alternatively, where schools are part of a wider network sharing a common ethos and mission, for instance catholic schools (Grace, 2002), voluntary co-operation may extend even outside of the local market. (Adnett & Davies, 2003: 401–2) The impact of marketisation on student attainment Across the developed world, there has been widespread experimentation (Adnett & Davies, 2000) with policies aimed at marketising the allocation of resources to schools (Whitty et al., 1998), which reflects concern over: the comparative performance of national state schooling systems together with a recognition of the increased importance of educa- tional achievement in determining national economic competitive- ness. Reforms have also been fostered by: public-choice critiques of state education (Chubb & Moe, 1988); the weakness of the relation- ship between government expenditure on schools and levels of edu- cational attainment; … and empirical evidence of the consumer welfare gains from deregulation and privatization in other industries.

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  Re-imagining Schooling for Education

  Socially Just Alternatives

  • Glenda McGregor, Martin Mills, Kitty Te Riele, Aspa Baroutsis, Debra Hayes(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  A consequence is that schooling, like other government apparatuses, has been reshaped in ways that need to be understood in terms of economic analysis and ideology (Stilwell 2006). A focus on markets alone elides recognition of the normal functioning of capitalism to generate inequality (Stilwell 2007). We pay attention to how aspects of capitalism, such as property rights and class relationships, are also affected by the operation of school- ing markets. Key drivers of diversification in schooling markets are the demands of parents who have the means and the mobility to ensure that their children receive educational opportunities that will enhance their post- school options (Campbell and Proctor 2014). These class-driven demands of parents generate a proliferation of choice. Increasing demand for upper secondary places also means that schools are able to be more selective, and to choose students who are likely to improve their ranking on externally assessed measures, thus further improving an insti- tution’s competitive capacity. 18 RE-IMAGINING SCHOOLING FOR EDUCATION The form that competition takes in schooling markets is mediated by local social and cultural contexts, but it generally involves contests to hold and expand market share, as demonstrated through student numbers. The effects of competition on the experiences of schooling of young people need to be analysed locally by taking into account these local contexts. For example, it is not uncommon for schools to create academic streams that may be designated as gifted and talented programmes. This form of internal differentiation of the curriculum is likely to produce very different experiences for students, according to whether they are in the academic or the general stream. Such streams can function in ways that quarantine certain groups of students from others.

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  Convergence and Diversity in the Governance of Higher Education

  Comparative Perspectives

  • Giliberto Capano, Darryl S. L. Jarvis(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Indeed, market segmentation is the principal driver precipitating divergence in the governance trajectories of higher education systems, and it explains why structural or ‘global’ pressures are necessarily uneven in their distribution and impact on countries and HEIs. 1.4.2 Commodification and Stratification: The Sociology of Higher Education Markets A second, and related, theoretical lens useful to framing how we might explore the forces propelling change in the organization and govern- ance of higher education relates to notions of commodification and the classification of goods: specifically, the sociology of markets and market operation – how goods are classified, quality is constructed, value differentiation is determined, and market stratification is pro- duced. As noted, higher education is typically viewed in relation to an encroaching ‘academic capitalism’: the commodification of academic labour outputs (research, knowledge commercialization, innovation, patents), the commodification of academic (and vocational) training in relation to students and the labour needs of the economy, or the reorganization of higher education as a result of the systemic forces of international market/knowledge competition. As also noted, mar- ketization and commodification have become the central, if not domi- nant, motifs through which assaults on disciplinary autonomy have been understood – in part a reflection of the continuing dominance of the ‘republic of scholars’ ontology. Strangely, however, this scholarship has been less than insightful in terms of the workings or actualization of marketization and commodi- fication in higher education and its relationship to governance transfor- mation, sector organization, or processes of differentiation among 20 Capano and Jarvis higher education systems (nationally and institutionally).

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  Development and Reform of Higher Education in China

  • Hong Zhen Zhu, Shiyan Lou(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Chandos Publishing

    (Publisher)

  3 It can be seen that both the objective situation facing higher education in China and the attributes and functions of higher education itself require a new market-oriented mechanism or system to innovate the original one. Only by relating closely to the demand of the market can a country’s higher education develop healthily and at the same time make the maximum contribution to the country and society, which is demonstrated by the reality and practice of developed countries. Marketization is the only approach to enable the state-owned higher education to compete in the market, improve quality and efficiency and optimize the structure in order to reap more economic and social benefits. Only by forcing higher education to compete in the market can a fundamental change of the Chinese current education system take place. By marketization, the current monopoly of public university on education could be broken and competition could be brought about to public higher education so that public universities are forced to carry out reform on the present administration system and exert themselves to meet the needs of the social and economic demand and the development of the market economy.

  Approaches to marketization of higher education

  Marketization of higher education aims at getting rid of the traditional administration model of government monopoly to increase the autonomy of HEIs and to introduce market mechanisms to improve the efficiency and to give full play to the role of higher education in the development of society. Market mechanism mainly refers to the price system and competition; autonomy of HEIs is mainly concerned with the internal and external affairs such as teaching, research, personnel, finance, infrastructure, recruitment, foreign exchange and so on. According to education theorist Jog Koelman, marketization of higher education should have the following three characteristics: first, autonomy of HEIs: the government should entitle the HEIs full authority so that the HEIs will respond rapidly to market signals according to their own characteristics and advantages; second, to replace the funding system which relies solely on the government by a new one with funding shared between the government and social forces; third, the quasi-market essence of the higher education market.4

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  Globalisation And Tertiary Education In The Asia-pacific: The Changing Nature Of A Dynamic Market

  The Changing Nature of a Dynamic Market

  • Siew Yiin Yap, William G Tierney, Christopher Findlay(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • World Scientific

    (Publisher)

  Nevertheless, the two terms are interrelated and the rise of privatisation has occurred during the development and expansion of globalisation. Globalisation here pertains to broad economic, technological, and scientific trends that deal with people, goods, and capital moving beyond defined, stable state borders. As Simon Marginson (2008, p. 2) notes, ‘globalization refers to processes of convergence and integration on a world or meta-regional (conti-nental) scale’. Globalisation with regard to higher education touches on many of the key assumptions about the term — the importance of the international flow of ideas and knowledge, the closer economic integration of countries through the increased flow of goods, serv-ices, capital and labour, and the cross-border movement of people (Stiglitz, 2006, p. 4). The transformations in the world economy are not entirely new and the ways that academic institutions respond also have historical roots (Altbach, 2004). Migration and trade, for example, have always played a role in human history, and nations have sent their students to other countries for an education and welcomed foreign students to their own institutions. Part of the definition of the modern 20th cen-tury professor suggests that what he or she studied was transnational, and that the creation, development and expansion of knowledge occurred through the faculty’s scholarly analysis and evaluation in journals that supposedly transcended national borders. Indeed, some universities have had long-standing relationships with other institu-tions or campuses in foreign countries. What is currently taking place, however, is unprecedented because of its size and scope. Whereas only a handful of universities claimed the mantle of international prominence, today many coun-tries desire to have their institutions ranked in the top 100 of the Forms of Privatisation 165 world. As Philip Altbach (2003, p. 5) has observed, ‘everyone wants a world-class university’.

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